School life

 What is school for? 

We brainstormed different things about learning - what is it important to learn? What would you like to learn? What helps us to learn? What makes learning difficult? What could you help others to learn? 

This brought up a lot of discussion as children moved around the room writing their ideas on the different sheets of paper. This 'bus stop' activity where they travel around the room and stop at each paper to write ideas helps them to have their own ideas heard, but also allows for mixing and discussion along the way. 

We then looked at photos of schools in different countries and thought about what might make it difficult or might help learning in each situation. 

We then thought about possible schools of the future. I posed a scenario and they had to think about advantages and disadvantages about it.

"The year is 2050. Schools have been declared 

too expensive and have been abolished. 

All children will work from home at online schools.

Students can choose any online school to participate in 

and could be working with children from 

many different countries." 

It was an interesting exercise as many at first were keen on the idea, but when they started to think about it they came up with many possible problems. 

There were several choices to expand thinking - designing an ideal classroom, thinking what makes a good teacher or a good friend and advertising for that, writing about what they would be like if they were a teacher etc.

SEA WEEK - Sea life

 Why is the sea important for us? 

We get over half our oxygen from the sea, and it is also an important part of the water cycle. Some food also comes from the sea. So it's as important to people as it is for the creatures who live in the sea. 

We thought about problems facing the sea and if we could do anything to help. We practiced kaitiakitanga (guardiandship) by going out to pick up rubbish to  stop it getting into the sea - we were surprised at how much we found. 

Children did various activities to learn more - learn to draw; researching sea creatures and some of NZ's  most endangered, the Maui Dolphin and the fairy tern; finding out more about Tīkapa Moana (the Hauraki Gulf - the area of sea that surrounds Whangaparaoa Peninsula), and some even asked to go out and find more rubbish. 

It's important for these tamariki to feel empowered and have a way to make a difference if they want to. They are often deeply caring individuals who can feel overwhelmed thinking about the issues in the world, so it's good for them to see people who are already helping, and to find a way that they can help too. 

Biospeliology - cave life

Bios = life (Greek)

Speliology = the study of caves

Ana = cave in Maori

We did some thinking about what life would be like in a cave. If you couldn't see how would you find food? 

We had a 'cave' set up in the room - under the tables - which children explored. I had some paper cutouts of cave critters in there for them to discover. Did you know that 'spelunking' is the name for exploring
caves. Lots of fun big words this week. 

We talked about glow worms (arachnocampa luminosa) and who had seen them before. Some had been to waitomo (wai = water, tomo= hole or go into). Did you know that we have glow worms at Shakespear Park? They can often be seen near the waterfall - go on a night walk and turn off your torches when you get to the waterfall. We thought about why they might glow. Here's a video about them.

Some animals live in caves their whole life (troglobytes - troglos = greek for cave, bytes from bios, life)

Some like to live in caves, but can live outside as well (troglophiles - phileos = love)

Some just visit caves (trogloxenes - xenos = guest).

We looked at adaptation needed to live in a cave.

People have lived in caves in various countries / times (some still do). We discussed why people might live in caves and what adaptations people would need to make - what would be difficult about living in a cave? We thought of advantages and disadvantages of living in a cave. 

Some designed their own cave houses (thinking about how to see, how to get rid of waste, how to get water), some created cave creatures out of pipecleaners - such as the tokoriro or cave wētā, some researched animals that live in caves etc.